


Nineteen Years

by imaginary_golux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They know what should have been.  Written for Porn Battle XIII.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nineteen Years

Nineteen years later, they still hate each other, in that bitter twisted way that you can hate someone who saved your life or gave you back your wand – gratitude turned so sharply into hatred that it cuts like a knife without a handle, leaving the attacker bleeding as much as the victim. Nineteen years on, every meeting between them is still laden with vicious words unspoken and razor-edged curses left uncast, for the sake of children who call each other ‘friend.’ And that is bitterest of all in both their mouths, that their innocent children should so calmly assume that friendship between a Malfoy and a Potter can exist; that bright-eyed youths who never knew the stark terror of the War should prove that hatred is no longer necessary – and perhaps never was.

Nineteen years later, they still dream, in their proper beds with their proper wives, of pale smooth skin and angles, of messy hair and grey eyes and moans, of the hot press of flesh and the thrum of blood under too-thin skin; nineteen years later, they still wake to look at their lovely, proper wives and hate more fiercely than before.

If there is fate – and one will answer one way, one the other – if there is destiny, then they ought to have stood together, pale hair and dark against the shadows, back to back as brothers – no, as shieldmates and friends. If there is fate, then they were fated to be matched in wit, in power, in will and in desire; if there is destiny, they ought to have fallen disheveled into beds and corners, hidden hallways and under trees, ought to have kissed as lovers do and torn each others’ clothes as ravenous as beasts.

Nineteen years later, they know what should have been, and looking at each other past laughing children and smiling wives, past nearly thirty years of hate and pain, past broken promises and broken fate, they hate because they cannot love.


End file.
